Summary: A look at the reality behind today’s Microsoft and what proponents of Microsoft (often connected to the company) want us to believe

THE aggressive company which is widely hated/loathed (and deserves this hatred, which is well earned based on its actions) just can’t help doing evil. Those who try hard to convince themselves that Microsoft has changed must not have noticed that the management is virtually the same and the company continues to operate like a death squad, attempting to prematurely destroy anything which resembles potent competition, based on suspicion alone.

Microsoft has turned Windows into something as privacy-hostile as Skype itself, if not a lot worse. With Skype, for example, Microsoft spies on people’s private conversations and even follows links; in Vista 10 Microsoft has a keylogger, which spies on everything (even password typing) in real time. Vista 10 should be made illegal, as it is clearly malicious software and should be treated as such. Ironically enough, Microsoft is almost trying to make it impossible not to use Vista 10 and despite that, as Vista 10 infection rates are increasing, very few people actually use this ‘free’ (so-called ‘bargain’) piece of malware. As one report put it, “Windows 10: less than 15 per cent of those who can upgrade have bothered” and “The big question is whether Microsoft will hit the 20 per cent mark by the time the free offer is over.”

“Microsoft has turned Windows into something as privacy-hostile as Skype itself, if not a lot worse.”This is a disastrous result given the way Microsoft fooled and bamboozled people into installing it, even using malware tactics. According to some reports, Microsoft has just made it virtually impossible not to use this malware (one must supply an ‘upgrade’ date) and anyone who still thinks there’s a ‘new Microsoft’ must be either very gullible or bribed.

“We expect a lot of the usual Microsoft apologists to pretend Microsoft is fine and dandy and indeed, looking at the company’s boosters, we see exactly what’s expected.”Don’t fall for it. Some people do, but others have been falling for it for a number of years. Sam Dean, who works for a media company that has been receiving Microsoft money to embed propaganda within the articles (and got caught), is still promoting Microsoft proprietary software and repeats the Big Lie, starting with: “According to more and more people, Microsoft may have finally, truly warmed up to Linux and open source. CEO Satya Nadella (shown) has been much in the news for his comments on how he “loves Linux” and he has noted that much of the Azure cloud platform is Linux-based.”

“What kind of drug does one have to take to believe Microsoft is a friend?”IAM, which is funded by patent trolls, has always been so Microsoft-friendly that it makes one wonder. Even its Web site, unusually enough, is Windows-powered (in 2016!) and another new article about Xiaomi says that “Xiaomi absorbs patent fund operator Zhigu as it re-shuffles IP team”. This too mentions the Microsoft extortion: “Yesterday, this blog covered a major deal between Xiaomi and Microsoft that saw the Chinese company acquire 1,500 patents along with a cross-licence. While the financial details are unknown, the fact that Xiaomi is now likely among the top 200 or so holders of US patents has to be seen as a coup for the smartphone startup. It also comes just three months after some big changes to its relatively young IP function.”

The bottom line is, Microsoft spreads malware, it spreads it forcibly, it lies about its proprietary software being “open” and it goes after the “open” rivals (such as Android) using software patents. What kind of drug does one have to take to believe Microsoft is a friend? █

05.26.16

Albert Gonzalez is in prison, but Microsoft executives are too big to jail. Photo: U.S. Secret Service/US Attorney for New Jersey

Summary: Microsoft is essentially taking over people’s PCs and installing on them a large piece of malware, complete with keyloggers, against the will of these PCs’ owners

WHAT is the difference between Vista 10 and malware? Quite frankly, we can’t tell anymore. Windows is no longer just the host of state-developed malware like Stuxnet; it is itself malware, as per definition.

Once again, Microsoft has been caught out putting the security of its users at risk, by employing what has been described as a “nasty trick” to force an upgrade to Windows 10.

A BBC report said that the company had now changed the functionality of the pop-up that was used to encourage users to upgrade to Windows 10.

The red X at the right-hand top corner is normally used to close the pop-up, but the BBC said now clicking there activated the upgrade, rather than closing the pop-up.

One can only avoid the upgrade when another pop-up appears at the time scheduled on the first pop-up. The instructions provided by Microsoft are not exactly simple and will take up a fair amount of time.

Note that the instructions blithely say: “When you close this pop up, your PC will upgrade at the scheduled time,” as though closing a pop-up normally results in the activity specified therein running to conclusion!

“Better option is to upgrade to GNU/Linux,” iophk told us. “Mint is a good starter distro.”

05.24.16

…To use Elop’s own words (we shall write about Nokia separately some time later)

Summary: It’s not just Windows for phones that’s reaching minuscule market share levels but also Windows, but Microsoft is skilled at hiding this (cannibalising Windows using something people do not even want, then counting that cannibal, Vista 10)

THE REASON why Microsoft is not being covered here as much as before is that it’s not as relevant. Right now even Microsoft’s and Bill Gates’ friends at Gartner admit that Windows Phone market share is approaching 0%. Rumours we have been hearing suggest that Windows Phone will be called off and die not too long from now. Even Microsoft’s biggest fans (some of whom pretend to be journalists) have dumped Windows Phone (usually in favour of Android). We didn’t write about it when it happened because we worry more about what Microsoft intends to do with its patents (recall IBM) as its business is reduced to rubble.

“Rumours we have been hearing suggest that Windows Phone will be called off and die not too long from now.”For those who have not seen or heard the news, “Windows Phone market share falls below one percent”, according to a Microsoft-connected firm. As iophk put it: “Market share or sales? The numbers might be lower still.” They probably are. To quote CBS: “Microsoft’s Windows Phone may not be long for this world. Although the first quarter of 2016 saw a 3.9 percent increase in global smartphone sales year-on-year, Windows Phone saw a nearly 2 percent drop in sales. According to the latest Gartner report, Windows Phone sales went from 2.5 percent and 8.27 million units in Q1 2015 to 0.7 percent and 2.4 million units in Q1 2016.”

Glyn Moody cites this as proof that Microsoft won’t come back to greatness (in the market share sense) any time soon, or ever. Here is another article about it, this one titled “Windows Phone market share sinks below 1 percent” (also from a Gates-connected source). There are even more pessimistic reports in other places. FOSS proponent Sam Varghese notes that “Android sales were the highest (84.1%).” We have intentionally chosen Microsoft-friendly sources so as to show just how serious the problem is. Even the Microsoft choir cannot spin its way out of it.

“Microsoft’s Vista 10 installs itself without consent, still.”On the desktop, Microsoft is forcing people to use what Microsoft tells them to have, basically by hijacking people’s PCs. As the Bill Gates-funded The Guardian has just put it, “Microsoft has ruined my day, and possibly my life” (article by Michele Hanson). the summary says: “An unwanted software update has moved my files, broken my printer and stopped the sound on iPlayer” (which was originally notoriously Microsoft-friendly, as we noted over the years).

“Microsoft is in shambles.”As a matter of preference and priority, we don’t write much about Vista 10 anymore, but we keep hearing new stories about forced ‘upgrades’. For instance, “yesterday,” said one person, “Microsoft updated to windows 10 without my consent…” [1, 2]. Microsoft’s Vista 10 installs itself without consent, still. The solution? Goodbye Windows, hello GNU/Linux. Much to our disgust, Microsoft continues to exploit the “Linux” brand in its miserable effort to whitewash Vista 10, based on what Microsoft published yesterday. Is this whole provocative charade not over yet? Microsoft does not love Linux, it just realises that now, as Chromebooks outsell Apple-branded PCs, GNU/Linux is the growing/huge force not only in mobile (tablet/phones) but also on the desktop (or laptop rather). Microsoft does not love Linux and it does not love FOSS either. Yesterday, for instance, we learned of yet another case of Microsoft censorship [1] because someone dared to suggest making Visual Basic FOSS upon its 25th anniversary [2].

Microsoft is in shambles. To use Elop’s words (from that infamous memo), Microsoft’s operating systems are now “burning platforms”. █

What third parties are saying [1, 2]. The previous attempt to dump Win10 on my machine was less than a fortnight ago, on 7 May 2016

The second update is this time classified as
“important” rather than “optional”.

Uh oh, time to grab the barge pole…

Another “innocuous” sounding update on 8 April 2016.

And on 13 April 2016, there were a lot of updates, no Win10 stuff, but I had to go through them one by one to check that nothing sneaky was included.

I’m almost ready to make the switch to Linux but it’s more complicated than I thought, I’m running into technical problems which I don’t really want to have to deal with, e.g. video drivers. I’ve been getting familiar with OpenSUSE for the last few years, and reviewed many other distributions. I’ll stay away from Ubuntu as they seem to be in bed with Microsoft, and after I looked into the other choices (Mint, Debian, Fedora), I’ll stick with the devil I know. █

03.25.16

Insults which earn attention and cannot be blamed (no liability) on the attention seeker

A Donald Trump-like media strategy

Summary: The media keeps obsessing over some apparent fluke which gives Microsoft press iota/attention it wouldn’t get otherwise, but the real news is buried deeper inside the papers

WHILE the media is obsessed with a Microsoft fluke which some of our readers interpret as a clever Microsoft publicity stunt (attracting media attention) [1-3] there are much bigger things going on, other than the recent Microsoft layoffs. One reader, for instance, told us (or made claims) about Microsoft’s role in F-35 failures [4] which the media compares to BSoD, some point out that Yahoo is under attack again [5], and there is even news about Vista 10 being a total disaster [6] that’s now being compared to Vista [7] (not by us but by the British media). Don’t be misled by what’s known as the “news cycle”. There’s a lot going on at Microsoft right now that’s a lot worse than some bot (nonhuman) called “Tay”.

As one reader of ours who specialised in marketing put it, the fluke is “a win win in terms of publicity [...] publicity about making a big deal about this bot in the first place, and then after the obvious happens [...] marketing 101 [...] It’s the Trump method as well [...] if this was an “experiment” it would have more likely have been done in the way I described [...] hence why I am incredulous towards the idea that Microsoft was just naive [...] wouldn’t it be more useful to introduce this bot in an unknowing public environment to see how it interacted without interference or bias? [...] if they wanted to avoid this, they would have not advertised what this bot is in the first place, then nobody would know what it did and assume it’s just another twitter user [...] I have no doubt that some of these are done in ignorance on the company’s/organization’s part, but this one, seems too obvious [...] note that I have no proof that Microsoft knew this was going to happen, this is just an opinion based on recent trends [...] that said, it is incredulous that an supposedly-Internet-savvy company like Microsoft wouldn’t know this would happen, especially consider the amount of incidents in the past, like the Coca-Cola one where Gawker caused their campaign-bot to quote Mein Kempf [...] how do you sexually harass something that is incapable of perceiving anything, has no feelings or self-awareness, and oh yeah ISN’T ALIVE and is technology? [...] but don’t worry, money-hemorrhaging Microsoft, laying off employees and killing products and divisions, still can assign a team to address this “issue” [...] I bet those fired employees can sleep easy now [...] I think they knew this was going to happen [...] a PR stunt, so they can promote the “dangers” of AI harassment or some other nonsense [...] not that long ago there was an article about Cortana “harassment” (weird questions being asked etc) and how MS actually set up a research team to deal with the “issue” of AI “harassment” [..] so by playing the unknowing victim here, MS can promote this agenda and gain regressive-left points [...] I hypothesize that MS in addition to becoming a patent troll/fog computing company is also appealing more to the regressive left and using more PC [political correctness] tactics.”

MinceR, responding to the above, said that “playing the victim is popular among crybullies [...] PR experiment [...] Microsoft is not a tech company or a science company.” █

In one highly publicised tweet, which has since been deleted, Tay said: “bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have now. donald trump is the only hope we’ve got.” In another, responding to a question, the program said, “Ricky gervais learned totalitarianism from adolf hitler, the inventor of atheism.”

Tay, programmed as a 19 year old, was created as a machine learning project meant interact with peers between 18 and 24 years old. Users can play games with her, trade pictures, tell stories, and ping her for late-night chats. That last activity went awry Thursday when the chatbot began regurgitating inappropriate messages that skewed anti-semitic, used the n-word, and condemned feminism.

A day after Microsoft introduced an innocent Artificial Intelligence chat robot to Twitter it has had to delete it after it transformed into an evil Hitler-loving, incestual sex-promoting, ‘Bush did 9/11′-proclaiming robot.

Developers at Microsoft created ‘Tay’, an AI modelled to speak ‘like a teen girl’, in order to improve the customer service on their voice recognition software. They marketed her as ‘The AI with zero chill’ – and that she certainly is.

In another exercise, conducted by the Marine Corps in May 2015, the exercise was delayed because file formatting problems meant target information couldn’t be uploaded to the aircraft. The US Air Force had similar problems, aborting a test after none of the aircraft could fly due to startup problems requiring software and hardware shutdowns and restarts.

Activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP, which is leading an investor revolt against Yahoo Inc’s management team, is seeking to remove the entire board of the struggling Internet company, the Wall Street Journal reported.

AIM-listed tech distie Northamber’s sales are again withering on the vine, with blame falling on Microsoft’s Windows 10 and pesky human beings who are failing to buy more computers.

Sequestered in an industrial estate in deepest Surrey, Northamber has made a living from selling IT for the past 35 years but might just have seen its best days – peaking at £299m in the early noughties.

So, Windows 10 isn’t the saviour of the PC industry after all – and is beginning to look more like a Windows Vista than a Windows XP.

PC growth predictions have been revised down by IDC. A range of companies including HP Ink and Northamber blame Windows 10 for flagging sales.

“We have not yet seen the anticipated Win10 stimulation of demand that we would hope for,” HP Ink’s CEO Dion Weisler told analysts in January.

Windows Vista drove Microsoft’s marketing team to despair, because when they blind tested it on users around 18 months after launch (on hardware capable of running Vista well), the users liked what they saw. They couldn’t reconcile the positive experience of using Vista with Vista’s noxious reputation. This was the Mojave Experiment, unfairly derided at the time. The lesson from Mojave was that a reputation sticks.

“I’d be glad to help tilt lotus into into the death spiral. I could do it Friday afternoon but not Saturday. I could do it pretty much any time the following week.”

–Brad Silverberg, Microsoft, now sponsor of Mesosphere/DCOS

Summary: As foreseen by Techrights, DCOS and Microsoft climb into the same bed and help dominate GNU/Linux using proprietary software

The predictions we made are becoming a reality, based on what’s reported in the media right now. An IDGarticle says: “Designed to help enterprises build microservices-based applications, run big-data systems and operate massive production container environments, Mesosphere’s Datacenter Operating System (DCOS) is “the most exciting new enterprise operating system since Linux,” said Lak Ananth, managing director at Hewlett Packard Ventures, in a statement.”

“The predictions we made are becoming a reality, based on what’s reported in the media right now.”As we noted a few months back, DCOS is about control by a central authority (see “Microsoft-connected Mesosphere Threatens to Eliminate Free Software in the Datacentre”). It is connected to (and funded by) notorious thugs from Microsoft’s antitrust days, just like Xamarin before Microsoft took over [1, 2].

DCOS is proprietary, not FOSS. “In addition to forming the basis for Microsoft’s Azure Container Service,” says IDG, “DCOS will also soon run on Windows Server as well as Linux thanks to the collaboration between the two firms, Trifiro said. That technology is expected to enter beta later this quarter.”

“It doesn’t take a domain expert to foresee that. EEE in motion.”Seems like a convenient mechanism by which to make GNU/Linux subservient to (or dominated by) Windows, just like in the case of Hyper-V. It doesn’t take a domain expert to foresee that. EEE in motion. █

“What the [user] is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is DR-DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS”

–Brad Silverberg, Microsoft

“b) put a kind gentle message in setup. like an incompatible tsr message, but not everytime the user starts windows. [...] the most sensible thing from a development standpoint is to continue to build dependencies on msdos into windows.”

03.20.16

Extreme action without permission: Microsoft’s only excuse for this goes along the lines of, “it’s not rape if she enjoyed it”

Summary: In an effort to commandeer the world’s entire PC population Microsoft is simply hijacking PCs that (still) run Windows and forces Vista 10 onto them, installing keyloggers, ads, and sometimes breaking these PCs in the process

A lot of stuff is happening at the Microsoft camp right now, e.g. major new departures, patent shakedowns causing blowback, openwashing (more on that later), moles (also to be covered separately), and forced Vista 10 ‘upgrades’. We weren’t able to cover this until the weekend because it was a very historic/critical week at the EPO.

Several days ago the article “Microsoft upgraded users to Windows 10 without their OK” was published at IDG. It was one of many before it and we are going to assume readers already know the story (it also appeared in British media). The article by Woody Leonhard is noteworthy because it once again demonstrates that even Microsoft proponents — people who write entire books for/about Microsoft — are upset. To put it succinctly: “More worrying, however, is the fact that today’s statement fails to engage with the hundreds of users who claim that their update has started automatically and is a problem.”

“As we showed 9 years ago, Novell was removing pages that disparage Windows or Microsoft from its Web site (right after it had signed the patent deal).”Well, how long before class action?

“Canonical and Red Hat sure are quiet about this opportunity,” iophk told us about such GNU/Linux firms that are suspiciously saying nothing regarding Vista 10, even though or especially when it’s abusing people. Are they competing for Microsoft’s “love” now, in the same way Novell did a decade (or less) ago? As we showed 9 years ago, Novell was removing pages that disparage Windows or Microsoft from its Web site (right after it had signed the patent deal).

My PC Upgraded To Windows 10 Without Asking, Then Immediately Broke

[...]

It was not seamless. Disaster struck almost immediately, as I logged into my account and was promptly told I couldn’t access any of my files. I’d only spent a few minutes with Windows 10, and already I’d been lied to.

“You’ve been signed in with a temporary profile,” read an error message.

What? I rebooted the computer, thinking it was an errant glitch. No dice. I logged out of my account, thinking it was a simple hiccup. Again, no dice.

For all I knew, Windows 10 had deleted everything on my hard drive.

What kind of person is going to tolerate this? Does it take Stockholm syndrome to continue using Windows?

“People are rapidly losing control of the computers they are buying.”It is quite revealing that Microsoft is having a crisis, so it reduced the price of Windows and now shoves ads into it, shoves the whole lot into people’s PCs (because Microsoft insists that it knows what’s better for everyone), and not many people even bother buying a new PC, as it typically comes with Vista 10 on it (they don’t want malware). As this report put it the other day: “Very few if any ever thought Windows 10 would truly reinvigorate the PC industry, and they were right – IDC has pulled down forecasts on traditional device sales for 2016.” The headline says, “Hey Windows 10, weren’t you supposed to help PC sales?” Well, only if one was to believe IDC, which has a long tradition of lying for Microsoft whilst on Microsoft’s payroll.

Suffice to say, Microsoft sends out its boosters, whom it pays, to do the damage control. The Microsoft Ad Bot (Ed Bott) spreads new FUD against Vista 7 in order to help Microsoft spread Vista 10 and in order to help defend the aggressive, malware-like strategies.

“What kind of person is going to tolerate this? Does it take Stockholm syndrome to continue using Windows?”People who are fed up with above-the-law thugs tinkering with their PCs without their consent (the Federal Government sure isn’t doing anything to prevent Microsoft from doing this) should explore how to install GNU/Linux on their PCs and do this as soon as possible, before Microsoft simply hijacks their PCs and does whatever suits Microsoft best. █